Manufacturer of steel buildings is branching out

When I think of steel buildings, I think industrial: warehouses, manufacturing, self-storage, garages.

What does not come to mind is the Goddard School in Worcester, or those iconic New Hampshire liquor stores, or shiny new Ford Motor Co. dealerships, or the Central Rock Climbing Center in Worcester. All are steel; all were manufactured by a quiet company in Sutton.

Package Industries Inc. has provided the skeleton and skin for 7,000 steel buildings since its founding in 1962. Its first building was a Quonset hut for Spag’s, that iconic local discount retailer of yore.

Package Industries is a family-owned company with 25 employees that was founded by Leo Moroney of Shrewsbury. The company is now run by two of his children: company President Dan Moroney and Miriam Sanderson, who is the company treasurer.

What Package Industries does is take raw steel, delivered from Midwest steel mills both in sheets and in rolls and turns it into support beams, joists (the ribs of the roof that are called “purlins” and “girts” in the steel business), roof and wall panels, and trim. They don’t manufacture the fasteners, windows or doors, but they will order them and place them on the delivery truck.

“People don’t know what we do,” said company Vice President Daniel R. Eckberg. “We are a well-kept secret.”

For years, being quiet worked for Package Industries, because most of the company’s business came from private contracts, he said. Now, with the pendulum swinging toward public work, the company needs greater visibility to compete against other steel building manufacturers, as well as against those who make buildings from concrete and wood.

The company is exploring a new market, the construction of short steel bridges.

Package Industries provided the steel for all of the CSX buildings at the expanded freight yard that is nearly complete on Worcester’s East Side, he said.

As an aside, the freight yard has spurred a regular stream of inquiries from trucking companies interested in erecting steel buildings for distribution centers to handle CSX freight. He said many of the inquiries were focused on parcels along Route 146.

The benefits of a steel building are readily apparent, Mr. Eckberg said.

Steel buildings are quick to build and reliable. One of their largest markets is Maine, and not one of their buildings has ever collapsed — not even under the heavy Maine snowpack.

Package’s steel buildings are 100 percent made-in-the-USA. The steel comes from mills in Indiana and Illinois, and other parts come from other American manufacturers.

About 93 percent of the steel the company uses is recycled — melted-down steel from vehicles, scrapped buildings, you name it.

The biggest disadvantage to steel is thermal conductivity. Steel buildings tend to get warmer than wood buildings in warm weather, and so cost more to cool in hot places.

Operations Manager Howard Hatch gave me a quick tour of the factory floor.

The company has machines that can weld two long pieces of steel together, as long as 70 feet. There is a huge press that can bend 1-1/2-inch thick steel. Employees cut sections of steel underwater to reduce noise and smoke. And on the day I walked in, the factory floor had plenty of men in welding masks, furiously welding triangle-shaped pieces onto support beams for a building in Maine.

“It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle,” Mr. Hatch explained. Package builds the pieces, and then the contractor puts it together on the job site.

The company delivers the completed “jigsaw puzzle” for a new building about once a week, he told me, and is working on three buildings on any given day. Package also has a thriving parts business, for repairs and maintenance of existing steel buildings, which comprises about 20 percent of its overall business.

As part of a nationwide celebration of steel buildings sponsored by the American Institute of Steel Construction, Package Industries is celebrating “SteelDay” on Sept. 28 from 8 a.m. to noon. To tour the company’s facility at 15 Harback Road in Sutton (just north of Boston Road, off Route 146), send an email to the company’s human resources manager, Lucille Ward, at lucille@packagesteel.com.

Contact Aaron Nicodemus by email at anicodemus@telegram.com or at (508) 793-9245.